Ovid's Theban History

8/12/2019 Ovid's Theban History

1/13

http://www.jstor.org/stable/639324 .

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to The Classical Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 87.112.215.46 on Wed, 12 Feb 2014 08:12:19 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions


2/13

Classical Quarterly 0 (i) 224-235 (1990) Printed n Great Britain 224

OVID S THEBAN HISTORY: THE FIRST

ANTI-A ENEID ?1

The magnificence of Augustan Rome is the indispensable setting for Ovid the urbanelove poet, rusticitas is the one unforgivable sin.2 Yet in Ovid s perpetuum carmen citiesare for the most part invisible, at best incidental backdrops; the countryside, presentin many vividly drawn landscapes, constantly thrusts itself on our attention, a placewhere mysterious powers menace the individual s identity.3 This neglect of the citymakes a striking, and deliberate, contrast with the Aeneid, a ktistic epic whosemeaning is governed by constant reference forward to the altae moenia Romae .Ovid, whose main epic time-scale does include the foundation of Rome, devotes fivewords to the

makingof those

walls.4The one

major exceptionto this indifference to

the central theme of Virgilian epic is the Theban episode in Metamorphoses 3.1-4.603.The story of Cadmus and his family forms a self-contained unit within the flux ofOvid s epic of transformation. It tells of a ktisis that goes wrong: Cadmus obeysApollo s injunction to found a city (3.13 moenia fac condas ), but in the end the exilewho had founded a new home is driven into a second exile: exit I conditor urbe sua(4.565f.).5

The episodes that span the distance between foundation and second exile stronglysupport the idea that Ovid s fascination with the rural locus amoenus s in tension withthe idea of the city, for books 3 and 4 contain some of the most haunting of Ovid slandscapes, in the stories of Actaeon, Narcissus, Pentheus, and Salmacis. There is infact a typically Ovidian imbalance between the frame, which tells of what is to adegree the archetypal Greek foundation legend,6 and the infill with its proliferationof wilderness settings. Ovid s manipulation of the contrasts between city and country,civilization and savagery owes much to tragic models, and in particular to theBacchae.7 To found a city is to impose culture on untamed nature; in the case of

1 In general on Ovid s mitation of the Aeneid see O. S. Due, Changing Forms (Copenhagen,1974), pp. 36ff.; G. K. Galinsky, Ovid s Metamorphoses Oxford, 1975), pp. 14-25, ch. 5; S.D6pp, Virgilischer influfl m Werk Ovids Munich, 1968); R. Lamacchia, Ovidio nterprete iVirgilio , Maia 12 (1960), 310-30. On the Ino episode: B. Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet2(Cambridge, 1970), pp. 131ff., 401ff.; E. J. Bernbeck, Beobachtungen ur Darstellungsart n OvidsMetamorphosen Munich, 1967), ch. 1. Bernbeck onducts a stylistic analysis of the episode nwhich, with reference o Virgilian models, he demonstrates he way in which Ovid consistently

ruptureshe

epic texture;his

maybe set beside

my analysis of the thematic nd structuralinversions hat Ovid performs n the models n the Aeneid. 2 cf. Ars Am. 3.127-8.3 cf. C. P. Segal, Landscape in Ovid s Metamorphoses (Hermes Einzelschrift 3, Wiesbaden,

1969). 4 Met. 14.774-5.5 Beginning and end are marked by other linguistic eatures: at 4.564 the matter of the

previous two books is described as luctu serieque malorum ; at 3.138-9 the prima...causa... luctus had been Actaeon. profugus occurs at 3.7 and 4.568; Cadmus is a wanderer at3.6 ( orbe pererrato ) and 4.567 ( erroribus actus = Aen. 6.532).

6 So F. Vian, Les Origines de Thibes. Cadmos et les Spartes (Paris, 1963), p. 231.7 For discussion of the themes sketched out in this paragraph ee C. P. Segal, Dionysiac

Poetics and Euripides Bacchae (Princeton, 1982), esp. ch. 4, and pp. 137-40 on Cadmuscivilizing ctivity. The pattern f Cadmus areer, rom exile o the height of royal prosperity ndback to a bestial existence n exile, s also that of Oedipus; note the version at Sen. Phoen. 12ff.,where Oedipus describes is return o the wilds as entry nto the landscape f Actaeon, Zethus,and Ino.



3/13

OVID'S THEBAN HISTORY 225

Thebes the inaugural act is the slaying by Cadmus of the serpent that dwells in thevirgin forest on the site. But nature keeps breaking in to undo civilization; the

countryside around Thebes remains as a mortal threat to those, like Actaeon andNarcissus, who are tempted by its beauties. Even more insidious is la bate humaine

that lurks within the city: immediately after the slaying of the serpent Cadmus createsthe inhabitants of his new city by another act of the civilizer, as agriculturalist, whenhe sows the serpent's teeth to produce a crop of human beings. This legend transfersto the foundation of a city the cosmogonic motif of the creation of the ordereduniverse out of the body of a slain monster,8 but in Thebes the exorcism of the chaosand violence of the origin is incomplete. The serpent re-emerges at the end ofMetamorphoses 3 in the figure of Pentheus, the son of Echion ('viperman', the oneSown-Man who is mentioned by name at 3.126). Pentheus presents himself as thedefender of the city founded by Cadmus, the colonist from the city of Tyre (3.538-9);but his speech opens with an impassioned appeal to the indigenous population, theanguigenae (3.531). His misjudgement of the true state of affairs is further hinted at

in the first words that he hurls at his citizens (3.531), 'quis furor...?' - a question thathe might with more propriety address to himself.9 Pentheus' rage is as elemental in itsfury as the violence of the serpent;10 t will lead him out of the city to Cithaeron wherehis mother will mistake him for a wild boar and destroy him. Cadmus' foundingbegins with the transformation of a serpent into men; it ends with the transformationof the twice exiled Cadmus and his wife into snakes (4.576-603). This is the end of thestory for Thebes' founder, but not for the city: the civilia bella and fratricide(3.117-19) of the Sown Men will break out again in the time of the children of

Oedipus;11 later still Thebes will become a byword for the great city annihilated, forexample in Pythagoras' discourse on mutability (15.429): 'Oedipodioniae quid suntnisi nomina Thebae?'

Many critics have felt that Pythagoras' list of cities that are now mere names shedsdoubt on the future eternity of the city of Rome, whose rise Pythagoras goes on toprophesy. That interpretation might find support from the thesis that I propound here(although neither is dependent on the other): I shall argue that the tragic story ofCadmus and Thebes in Metamorphoses 3 and 4 is constructed with constant referenceto the great epic of Rome, Virgil's Aeneid.12 t is in fact the first example of an 'anti-

8 cf. Vian, op. cit. (n. 6), pp. 158ff., 171ff.Vian suggests, p. 175, hat n the Ovidian ersion hefratricide f the Sown Men, followed by Echion's pledge of fraternal ides (Met. 3.126-8), maybe read n terms of a cathartic acrifice which gives military uror free rein before he process ofsocialization an begin. But this is overoptimistic n the light of subsequent Theban history.

9 'quis furor...?' are also the first two words addressed y Lucan o the citizens of Rome,

Bell. Civ. 1.8; see below for further discussion of analogies between Theban and Roman civilwar.10 3.568-71 (Pentheus' nger) sic ego torrentem, ua nil obstabat eunti, lenius et modico

strepitu ecurrere idi; at quacumque rabes obstructaque axa tenebant, spumeus t fervenset ab obice saevior ibat'; 3.79-80 (the serpent) impete nunc vasto ceu concitus imbribusamnis fertur et obstantes proturbat ectore ilvas'.

1 3.123 mutua vulnera' s used of the later war at Thebes n Trist. 2.319. That war s alludedto at Met. 9.403ff. Cf. also 7.141-2 (Colchis) terrigenae ereunt per mutua vulnera ratrescivilique adunt acie'.

12 Association of Thebes and Rome is also suggested by the ecphrasis f the cup presentedto Aeneas by Anius at Met. 13.681-99, with its scenes of the daughters f Orion sacrificed nexpiation f the plague devastating hebes and of their ubsequent ebirth, f obvious relevanceto the Trojans' own story (pointed out by G. K. Galinsky, Ovid's Metamorphoses Oxford,1975], p. 221); but that is not the end of the history of Thebes, any more than Aeneas'foundation n

Italys the end of the

historyof Rome.



4/13

226 PHILIP HARDIE

Aeneid', and so the precursor of Lucan's Bellum Civile and Statius' Thebaid.13 Theepic model coexists easily with the patterns from tragedy sketched out above: Virgil'sepic is already heavily indebted to tragedy, especially in books 4 and 7, which areparticularly important as models for Metamorphoses 3 and 4.14

Ovid's Theban story will be considered in its relation to the Aeneid under threeheadings: (1) The foundation legend. (2) The tension between man within the city andthe natural world outside the walls. (3) The repeated intervention of a vengeful godas a way of structuring the narrative.

1. FOUNDATION

Allusion to the Aeneid is particularly dense at the beginning of Ovid's Thebannarrative, predisposing the reader to extended comparison of the two narratives. Thisin itself is a Virgilian device, for the first book of the Roman Homer calls attentionto its aemulatio through particularly close and dense imitation of Homer. 1 Virgil and

Ovid both begin the third book of an epic with the tale of an exile who wanders overthe world in search of a place to settle; that place is marked out, in fulfilment of adivine prophecy, by a recumbent animal. On reaching the promised land the herogives thanks to the spirits of the place.16 In the sequel Cadmus sends his men to fetchwater for the sacrifice to Jupiter, and they discover a vast serpent which devours orpoisons them; Cadmus comes in search of his men, and succeeds in killing the serpent

13 The longa retro eries' of Stat. Theb. 1.4-16 s virtually summary f Ovid's Theban books(cf. Met. 4.564 'serieque malorum').

14 The origin of the people of Thebes s illustrated with the famous simile comparing heSown-Men ising rom he ground o figures n the aulaea rising n the theatre Met. 3.111-14).In the Roman heatre at this time the curtain rose at the end of a play (W. Beare, The Roman

Stage3 [London, 1964],pp. 267f.),but

mayit still be that with this simile

ntroducing he menof Thebes Ovid signposts ntry nto a stagey, ragic world? Here too there would be Virgilianprecedent: he stage for the tragedy of Dido and of Carthage n Aeneid 1 is set with the sylvanscaena behind he harbour at Carthage at 164; the prologue o the tragedy s given by Venuscothurnata 1.337): cf. E. L. Harrison, PVS 12 (1972-3), 10-25. It is perhaps not coincidentaleither hat the setting or the last catastrophe n the house of Cadmus, he rock rom which Inothrows herself nto the sea, seems o echo Virgil's Carthaginian arbour: Met. 4.525-7 'imminetaequoribus copulus; ars ma cavatur fluctibus t tectas defendit ab imbribus ndas, summariget rontemque n apertum porrigit aequor'; Aen. 1.162-6 'hinc atque hinc vastae rupesgeminique minantur in caelum copuli, quorum ub vertice ate aequora uta silent; um silvisscaena coruscis desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra. fronte sub adversascopulis pendentibus ntrum' (where rons [scaenae] ontinues the theatrical mage). Otherexamples f figurative staging' n the Metamorphoses: 1.22ff. Orpheus n the amphitheatre);S. Hinds, The Metamorphosis of Persephone (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 33ff., on Met. 5.388f.

('amphitheatre' etting or rape of Persephone).15 For example Aeneas' first words in the epic, Aen. 1.94, are a virtual ranslation f Od.5.306.

16 Both stories of course conform o common patterns f foundation egends Vian, op. cit.[n. 6], pp. 76ff. on the Theban egend with many parallels; J. Rykwert, The Idea of a Town[Princeton, 976],p. 44; T. J. Cornell, Griinder', RAC 12 [1983], 1129-32); he verbal parallelsbetween Ovid and Virgil herefore bear a greater weight of proof: exile: Met. 3.5; Aen. 2.780,798 etc. Wandering ver the world: Met. 3.6 'orbe pererrato'; Aen. 1.756 omnibus errantemterris et fluctibus'. Cf. also Aen. 2.294-5 'his moenia quaere magna pererrato tatues quaedenique ponto'. Animal omen: Met. 3.10ff. bos); Aen. 3.389ff., 8.42ff. sus); recumbent: Met.3.23 procubuit = Aen. 8.83, in same sedes. Thanksgiving to new-found land: Met. 3.24-5; Aen.7.135-8; Met. 3.25 ignotos, Aen. 7.137 ignota. Ovid sets a fashion in his structural imitation ofthe opening of the third book of the Aeneid: Lucan 3 opens with Pompey leeing rom Italy, na pointed nversion f Aeneas' departure rom Troy; Silius 3 like Aeneid begins with the wordpostquam,

ontinuinghe narrative fter the destruction f a

city (Saguntum).



5/13


after a heroic struggle. Here Ovid switches rom the model of Aeneas' ourney o thatof the fight between Hercules and Cacus n Aeneid 8, and by this switch approachesan area of more specifically Roman allusion.17 vander ells the story of Hercules ndCacus o Aeneas during he latter's visit to the site of the future Rome, but within he

overall structure f Aeneid 8, preceding he descriptions f the site of Rome and ofRoman history (on the shield), t functions as a kind of foundation tory of a well-known kind: before Rome can be built the site must be cleared of a destructive ndelemental monster by a hero who prefigures he founder. 8 admus goes in search ofhis lost companions, s the Virgilian Hercules oes in search of the cattle that Cacushas stolen. Two details n particular n the Ovidian narrative lert us to the Herculeanmodel: firstly, Cadmus goes to meet the serpent lad in a lion-skin 3.52-3, 81), theconstant attribute of Hercules. Secondly, Cadmus first attacks the serpent with agreat mill-stone, molaris 3.59), a word found only here in the Metamorphoses, ndin the Aeneid only at 8.250, as one of the weapons used by Hercules against Cacus.Thus far Cadmus s successful n the role of Herculean ivilizer. n Aeneid 8 the story

of Cacus s followed by a hymn to Hercules elebrating is monster-slaying s bothproof of his divine parentage nd justification or his apotheosis 8.301 'salve, veralovis proles, decus addite divis'). A very different omment ollows Cadmus' ictory:a mysterious voice speaks (3.98-9): 'quid, Agenore nate, peremptum serpentemspectas? et tu spectabere erpens'. This is the first sign that Cadmus' tory will nottrace the same path as that of Aeneas and Hercules.

Cacus s not a serpent, lthough he language hat describes Hercules hrottling hemonster t Aeneid .260-1 s echoed n the following hymn o Hercules hat tells of thesnakes strangled y the infant Hercules 8.288-9). Ovid's real serpent borrows manyof his features rom the two serpents hat attack Laocoon and his sons in Aeneid2.203ff.19 ythis 'combinatorial mitation' of features frorii wo separate ooks of theAeneid Ovid reveals an alertness o significant tructural orrespondences n thatpoem: within the wider symmetry between Aeneid 2 and 8 (books that tell,respectively, f the destruction and creation of a city) the death of Laocoon andHercules' killing of Cacus stand in an inverse relation to one another; for, if theslaying of the monster Cacus is a necessary aming of the wilderness before thebusiness of city-building, ttended with suitable religious ritual, can start, the deathof Laocoon, he sacrificer acrificed, s an omen of the destruction f Troy; the savageserpents hen proceed o instal themselves t the centre of the city, in the temple ofMinerva.

2. TO THE HILLS AND THE VALES

In Metamorphoses the Theban erpent s destroyed, but the seeds of its resurrection

are sown in the soil of the newly founded city; the descendants f Cadmus wander,or are driven away, from the city to become he victims of a natural world hostile toman. In the final disaster before Cadmus decides hat he has had enough and himselfleaves the city, Athamas and Ino are driven mad by Tisiphone. Athamas repeats hedelusion of Agave when he calls for nets to hunt down 'a lioness and her twin cubs'

17 The parallels with the Cacus story are noted by F. B6mer, P. Ovidius Naso MetamorphosesI-III (Heidelberg, 969), pp. 464f.

18 Vian, op. cit. (n. 6), pp. 101f.: e.g. Apollo's slaying of Python at the same ime hat he builtthe temple at Delphi (cf. J. Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins[Berkeley, etc., 1959], p. 592 s.vv. 'Building of temple or palace after god's victory'); J. Trumpf,'Stadtgriindung und Drachenkampf (Exkurse zu Pindar, Pythien 1)', Hermes 86 (1958), 129-57;N. S. Rabinowitz, 'From Force to Persuasion: Aeschylus' Oresteia as Cosmogonic Myth',Ramus 10 (1981), 159-91. The

parallelsare noted

byB6mer,

p.458.



6/13

228 PHILIP HARDIE

- his wife and children (4.513-14). Hunting was always a fatal attraction for Ovid sThebans, but the theme reaches its final intensity here as Athamas pursues hisimaginary prey within the city itself, media furibundus in aula (4.512). His wife Ino,however, repeats the Maenad s rush into the real countryside taking her surviving sonwith her. She also repeats the furious departure from the city of Virgil s Amata (partof the larger imitation of Aeneid 7 discussed in the next section), who likewise takesa child with her, simulato numine Bacchi (Aen. 7.385): Ino s Bacchic fury is inreality the result of infatuation by Juno operating through Tisiphone. EuhoeBacche is the cry of both Amata and Ino.20 Aeneas has come to Italy to found a city;the effect of his arrival is to destroy the cohesion of the city already there,21 as itsinhabitants revert to nature. Aeneas seems doomed to repeat in Italy the destructionthat he had wrought in the city of Dido in book 4; Carthage too is undone when manfalls prey to the uncontrollable forces of nature. Virgil s locus inamoenus outside thesafety of the city walls is the cave of Aeneas and Dido s wedding . And Virgil alsoworks the tale of the snaring of Dido through the imagery of a hunt that takes place

inside the city.Dido in the solitude of her madness is compared to the furied Pentheus when hesaw Thebes double (Aen. 4.469-70); in the preceding lines, 467-8, she is described asseeming, in her dreams, semper longam incomitata ... / ire viam22 et Tyrios desertaquaerere terra . By a coincidence that will not have been lost on Ovid Tyrii might alsobe used of the Thebans, whose founder was, like Dido, a refugee from Tyre (or Sidon)and a descendant of Agenor.23 Thebes shared the fate of Carthage in being a great citythat was deliberately and utterly destroyed in historical times, Thebes by Alexanderthe Great. Virgil s story of the city of Carthage is a suggestive model for Ovid sThebes for these reasons, and also because Aeneid 4 provides an account in briefcompass within a longer epic of the whole history of a city, from foundation (theactivity on which Aeneas is engaged at 4.260) to final destruction (figuratively andproleptically at 4.669-71). As we have seen, Ovid imitates Virgil in casting out intoexile the founder-to-be at the beginning of the third book of an epic; we might alsosee Ovid s story of Thebes as short-circuiting the Virgilian vision of an enduringfoundation, but one deferred beyond the limits of the poem, by fusing into one thethemes of (i) departure into exile with the final goal of the foundation of Rome(Aeneid 3), and (ii) premature termination of a newly-founded city (Aeneid 4).Cadmus, like Dido, makes his exit in the fourth book of an epic.24

Within the Aeneid the story of Carthage forms a counter-example to the story ofRome. The wanderings of Dido and her settlement in Africa might already be calledan anti-Aeneid : her early history, flight from her home city, makes her especially

2o Aen. 7.389, Met. 4.523. Cf. also Met. 4.521 exululat with Aen. 7.395 ululatibus.21 A city that has some distinctly Roman features: ee W. A. Camps, CQ 53 (1959), 54.22 In her dream he suffers he fate literally undergone y Cadmus, ast back nto exile, Met.

4.567, longisque rroribus ctus . The theme of exile renewed ccurs n another ontext at Aen.4.545-6 quos Sidonia vix urbe revelli, rursus agam pelago .

23 Agenor: Aen. 1.338 Agenoris urbem ; Met. 3.51, 97 etc. Ovid does not in fact use Tyrii= Thebans n Met. 3 and 4, but he alludes o the Tyrian origin at 3.35, 258, 539. With Virgil sSidonia Dido cf. Met. 3.129 Sidonius hospes (Cadmus), and see also 4.543, 572; at Met. 14.80Dido is Sidonis.

24 The temptation o this fusion will have been increased y the fact that Virgil sandwicheshis books 3 and 4 between visions of a fire-ravaged ity: 3.3 omnis humo fumat NeptuniaTroia ; 5.3-4 moenia respiciens, uae am infelicis Elissae conlucent lammis . The Carthagebooks are also the story of Aeneas attempt o help found an alternative ity to Troy (cf. esp.Aen. 4.260) and his enforced return nto exile, rursus harenosae ugiens nova moenia errae ,as Ovid

putsit, Met. 14.82.



7/13


sympathetic to Aeneas' plight, but her eventual antipathy is the personal expressionof an opposition between the two cities which will only be resolved with the totaldestruction of the one, and the unlimited expansion of the other. But an alternativereading of the Aeneid might see the story of Aeneas itself as containing its own 'anti-Aeneid', the text at war with itself.25 This raises the wider question of the meaning ofOvid's Theban story: is it just the clever inversion of Virgilian themes tested on a citythat is emphatically not Rome, or does the Ovidian Thebes hint at a darkerinterpretation of the Aeneid itself, suggesting a warning to the Roman reader? I havenoted the pervasive presence of the themes of Attic tragedy in Ovid's Theban tales,and it is again to tragedy that Ovid might have looked for this admonitory use of thelegendary city of Thebes. Froma Zeitlin has discussed the ways in which the Thebesthat the Athenians saw represented before them on the stage of the theatre ofDionysus functioned as an 'anti-Athens', in which 'Athens acts out questions crucialto the polis, to the self, the family, and society, but [where] these are displaced upona city that is imagined as the mirror opposite of Athens'. 'Events in Thebes

...[instruct] the spectators as to how their city might refrain from imitating theother's negative example.' 26 Ovid's Roman reader might observe that prominent inCadmus' new prosperity is the fact that for parents-in-law he has Mars and Venus,parents of Harmonia - but also of the Romans themselves. 27 he serpent, beast ofMars (Met. 3.32), lingers in the Theban citizenry; what is the significance of the wolfon the Capitol?28

Aeneid 8 presents us with a number of myths of Roman origin, perhaps not finallyreconcilable. The story of Cacus and the dragon-slaying Hercules reads (at least onone level) as the extirpation of bestiality by the godlike hero, and is a complement tothe laudes Italiae in Georgics 2.136ff. which praise Italy as a land blessed by theabsence of savage beasts, both natural and unnatural: no crops of armed menspringing from dragon's teeth here (140-2). At the other end of Aeneid 8 we are shownanother beast that dwells in a cave on the site of Rome, but this time there is no pest-control: Virgil's scenes of Roman history on the Shield of Aeneas open with Romulusand Remus and their 'mother', the she-wolf, also an animal of Mars (8.630-4):what is it that they suck in with their mother's milk? This origin is not put aside with

25 This s of course a very common reading; n formulating t in this way I think of the olderfashion of seeing an 'anti-Lucrece' n Lucretius.

26 F. Zeitlin, Thebes: Theater f Self and Society n Athenian Drama', n J. P. Euben ed.),Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley, etc., 1986), pp. 101-41.

27 Met. 3.132. In the Aeneid his oint parentage s focused n the description f the Shield ofAeneas, he gift of his mother Venus, displaying pageant of Roman history hat begins withthe sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus.

2s Augustan poets raise similar doubts about the Italian character: he phrase genus acre

occurs wice n the Georgics, nce in the laudes taliae of the peoples of Italy (2.167), and onceof wolves (3.264).29 Aen. 8.632 matrem, striking usage. Cf. Sil. 5.143-4 'umentique ub antro, ceu fetum,

lupa permulcens uerilia membra' the shield of Flaminius, Roman certainly ot in control).Note also Tarpeia's disparagement f Romulus at Prop. 4.4.53f. 'quem sine matris honorenutrit nhumanae ura papilla upae'; and Prop. 2.6.19-20 'tu criminis uctor, nutritus duro,Romule, acte lupae'. Nurse's milk appears n Dido's outburst against Aeneas at Aen. 4.367'Hyrcanaeque dmorunt ubera igres', on which Favorinus, ap. Aul. Gell. 12.1.20, omments'quoniam videlicet n moribus nolescendis magnam ere partem ngenium altricis et naturalactis enet'; cf. also Ovid, Ibis 229-31 'gutturaque mbuerunt nfantia acte canino: hic primuspueri venit in ore cibus. probibit nde suae rabiem nutricis alumnus'; B6mer on Ov. Met.7.32-3; Luck on Ov. Trist. 1.8.43f.There will be further nalogies between he she-wolf and theVirgilian Cacus f it is correct hat the Lupercal was an entry o the Underworld nd the lupaan infernal animal (A. Alf61ldi, Die Struktur des voretruskischen Rbmerstaates [Heidelberg,1974],p. 98).



8/13

230 PHILIP HARDIE

childish things: at Aeneid 1.275 Romulus makes his entry into the poem in thedisguise of the wolf, clad in his nurse s hide. The picture on the Shield of the lupinemother is cast into greater relief by the immediately preceding scene of maternal

protectiveness, where Aeneas receives his new armour from his mother, the goddessVenus (608-16). Thebes also has a dual origin, firstly in the refugees from Tyre,average specimens of humanity led by a descendant of Zeus, but secondly in thechildren of the serpent (Met. 3.538-45). The first scene on the Shield of Aeneas playson the contrasts of war and peace;a30 recent work has brought out the widerambivalence of the wolf as an animal living either in an image of human society oras an outcast; embodying either the unanimity of the Mannerbund or the pleonexia ofthe tyrant; dwelling on the dangerous boundaries of war, civil war, and sacrifice. Thusthe wolf problematizes the centrally epic topic of the nature and objects of furor or

Atuaa.31 Can the Roman military spirit be safely channelled into conflict with theoutsider, and prevented from turning against itself?32 Certainly the later inhumancrime of Romulus in killing his brother leaves a stain that is not easily washed out:

Rome, like Thebes, is founded in fratricide, and to fratricide it will return in later civilwars.33 And for Virgil the chain of family strife extends figuratively back into the past:Allecto is called on by Juno as an agent of civil war (7.335): tu potes unanimosarmare in proelia fratres . The formulation is in fact more apt of Eteocles andPolynices than of Romulus unpremeditated attack on Remus or of the war betweenthe father-in-law Latinus and his prospective son-in-law Aeneas; the peasants warthat breaks out later in Aeneid 7 is a ghastly prefiguration of historical wars foughton Italian soil. The metaphor at 7.526, horrescit strictis seges ensibus , suggests themyths of self-destructing Sown-Men, and acquires extra and tragic point if weremember Georgics 2.142. The following simile of the sea rising gradually before theblast of storm-winds (Aen. 7.528-30) was among the materials for Ovid s simile of therising aulaea used to describe the Sown-Men.34 By the time of Lucan the analogybetween the fratricides and civil wars of Thebes and Rome is well established ;35 thequestion of how much the Aeneid may owe to epic and tragic versions of the Thebanstory is one that requires further research.36

30 P. R. Hardie, Virgil s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), pp. 360ff.31 See M. Detienne nd J. Svenbro, Les loups au festin ou la cite mpossible , n M. Detienne

and J.-P. Vernant (edd.), La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris, 1979), pp. 215-37, esp.228ff.; A. Alf6ldi, op. cit. (n. 29), chs. 1and 4; R. G. Buxton, Wolves and Werewolves n GreekThought , n J. Bremmer ed.), Interpretations f Greek Mythology London and Sydney, 1987),pp. 60-79. On furor see G. Dumezil, Horace et les Curiaces (Paris, 1942), ch. 1. Enemies of Romesometimes used the lupa as index of the city s bestial rapacity: Livy 3.66.4; Veil. 2.27.2; Justin38.6 (Mithridates). n possible onnections between wolf-man Arruns n Aeneid 11.759ff. ndthe hero Aeneas see L. R. Kepple, Arruns and the Death of Aeneas , AJPh 97 (1976), 344-60.The neoclassicist

painter David exploits the dark sideof

the lupain his The

Lictors bringingBrutus the Bodies of his Sons , discussed by N. Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of theAncien Regime (Cambridge, 1981), p. 234.

32 The complaint of Lucan, Bell. Civ. 1.8ff. On warrior-classes and their dangers see Vian, op.cit. (n. 6), chs. 7, 11.

33 Zeitlin, art. cit. (n. 26 above), p. 126, characterizes the tragic Thebes as the city wherethe past inevitably rules, continually repeating and renewing itself so that each new generation,each new episode in the story, looks back to its ruin even as it offers a new variation on thetheme .

34 Met. 3.111-14 sic ubi tolluntur festis aulaea theatris, / surgere signa solent primumqueostendere vultus, cetera paulatim, placidoque educta tenore tota patent imoque pedes inmargine ponunt ; Aen. 7.528-30 fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento, lpaulatim sesetollit mare et altius undas erigit, nde imo consurgit d aethera undo.

a5 Lucan, 1.549-52, 4.549-51. See E. Narducci, Maia 26 (1974), 103ff.31 What might Propertius friend Ponticus have done in his Thebaid (Prop. 1.7.1)?



9/13


3. THE INTERVENTIONS OF JUNO

Ovid's Theban narrative is framed by the arrival and departure of Cadmus, but he isnot an actor in the intervening episodes, in the way that Aeneas and his adventuresare the source of narrative unity in the Aeneid. Unity within these interveningepisodes is provided by devices of thematic and structural repetition: I havementioned the recurrent motif of the opposition between city and wilderness, manand beast. The subunit formed by the episodes in book three constitutes a set ofvariations on the (appropriately tragic) themes of sight, blindness, and recognition.37But the recurrent narrative structure that links all the Theban stories (with theexception of the inset songs of the Minyeides) is that of the intervention of a vengefulgod to punish a mortal who errs, wittingly or unwittingly 3 the choice of this basicnarrative unit provides the occasion for close and intricate imitation of the Aeneid.This is imitation that cleverly mimics the overall shape of the Aeneid by emphasizingthe episodic aspect of the Virgilian structure, at the same time as it shows itself

acutely aware of the way in which Virgil draws together widely separated parts of hispoem by structural and thematic correspondences of one sort or another (indeed themethod which Ovid himself uses throughout he Theban narrative). Much of the funlies in Ovid's exploitation of the features of repetition and self-reference within theVirgilian model in order to recombine the components in new and surprising ways.39

The simplest structural symmetry in the Aeneid, that between the first and secondhalves of the poem, is grandly signposted by the twofold intervention of Juno seekingagents of her wrath, at 1.34ff. and 7.286ff.; the parallels between the raising of thestorm through the Titanic winds of Aeolus and the infuriation of the Italians with ablast from Hell have often been analysed.40 Supernatural, natural, and humanviolence are closely comparable, and intersect in the figurative elaboration of each

episode.Like the Aeneid, the story of the house of Cadmus contains two large-scaleinterventions by Juno in pursuance of her hatred and anger: at 3.256ff. against themother of Bacchus, Semele, and at 4.420ff. against the new god's aunt and nurse, Ino.Virgil's Juno conducts a one-woman feud with Aeneas, whereas Ovid's goddess isonly one of a number of vengeful gods who contribute to the undoing of Cadmus'founding activity (Diana, Nemesis, Bacchus),41 and her interventions cannot thereforemotivate the whole narrative as is the case with the Aeneid. Ovid neverthelessmanages by a variety of means to heighten the importance of Juno in the Thebanstory. Firstly, she has particular grounds for hostility, both the prior causa (3.258-60)

37 The coherence f book 3 as a unit s ensured by the ring ormed by the allusions n the last

story, the death of Pentheus, o the first n the series of Cadmus' woes, the death of Actaeon.38 B. Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet2 (Cambridge, 970),ch. 5; ibid. pp. 131-3 on imitation of

Virgil n the Ovidian nterventions f Juno.3 This combinatorial mitation' of Virgil becomes part of the stock-in-trade f Latin epicists

after Ovid: see my article Flavian Epicists on Virgil's Epic Technique', orthcoming n A. J.Boyle (ed.), The Imperial Muse: Ramus Essays on Roman Literature of the Empire, vol. ii.

40 e.g. Heinze, Virgils epische Technik3 (Leipzig and Berlin, 1915), pp. 182f.; V. P6schl, TheArt of Vergil Ann Arbor, 1962), pp. 24ff.

41 But note that Virgil also uses Dionysiac imagery n the context of the destruction ordisintegration of the city: see n. 49 below. On the night of the sack of Troy Helen led a bandof 'Maenads' inside the walls, Aen. 6.517f. 'illa chorum simulans euhantis orgia circum/ducebat Phrygias.' Furthermore Ovid's Acoetes, devotee of Bacchus, owes a little to Virgil'sdeceptive stranger Sinon (cf. Met. 3.575 with Aen. 2.57, Met. 3.586 with Aen. 2.87); wasEuripides' insidious Dionysiac stranger already one of the models for the insinuations of Virgil's

Greek?



10/13

232 PHILIP HARDIE

of Europa, and the causa recens (3.260) of her husband s affair with Semele; thisdistinction between old and new causes for Juno s wrath is Virgilian (Aen. 1.23ff.).42Secondly, the two Juno-episodes mark the beginning and end of the important sub-plot of the birth and nursing of Bacchus. Thirdly, the Ino-episode, with its elaborate

Tartarean machinery, functions as the climax to the whole sequence of divinevengeances that runs through the story of Cadmus race. Both interventions of Juno,against Semele and against Ino, obviously rework Aen. 1.34ff.;43 the second,describing Juno s enlistment of Tisiphone against Ino, takes as its primary model thesecond of the Virgilian passages, the evocation of Allecto, but also alludes to the firstVirgilian passage, recombining in one episode the two structurally linked episodes inthe Aeneid.

Juno s approach to Semele at Met. 3.273ff. is simple and direct (in both episodesshe goes on her own missions rather than operating through Virgilian intermediaries):impersonation by the goddess of Semele s nurse, Beroe, and an almost too easyinveigling of the naive Semele into calling for her own destruction. Her method wittilyreworks the

VirgilianJuno s wish

that,like

Pallas,she could use the

weaponof

Jupiteragainst her mortal enemy (Aen. 1.39ff.). This in a sense she achieves, through thethunder and lightning of the storm (Aeneid 1.90); Ovid s Juno works a more satisfyingrevenge, by tricking Jupiter himself into using his thunderbolt on his mistress (272 ablove suo ). Her disguise as an old woman reminds us of Allecto s disguise as the agedpriestess Calybe at Aeneid 7.415-19.44 But the name of Semele s nurse, Beroe (278),points to another Virgilian model, Iris disguise as a Beroe at Aen. 5.620 when she issent down by Juno in order to persuade the Trojan women to fire the Trojan ships.Again Ovid compresses elements in the Virgilian model: here it is Semele herself whogets too close to the fire; and it is a fire that is caused by Jupiter, whereas in Aeneid5.693-9 Jupiter s thunder is heard in a storm that extinguishes the burning ships. Thecombination of models from Aeneid I and 5 coincides with modern perceptions of theparallelism between the storm and its sequel in book 1 and the firing of the ships andits sequel in book 5.45

Ovid, like Virgil, uses verbal and thematic repetition to link his two Juno episodes.In both cases it is the thought of a paelex (Met. 3.258, 4.422) that enrages Juno. Thegoddess will prove her power over Semele by submerging her in the waters of the Styx(3.272 mersa), an allusion to the Virgilian Juno s aim of sinking the Trojan ships (Aen.1.40 summergere, 69 submersas), but also a foreshadowing of the end of Ino and herson, immersion in the sea.

That end is anticipated in Juno s monologue at 4.422ff., where she rehearses theexempla provided by her stepson Bacchus vengeance on the Etruscan sailors,Pentheus, and the Minyeides; her success in repeating in the case of Ino and her

associates Dionysiac metamorphosis, immersion (423 immergere), mutilation of ason, and avian transformation, coincides with the narrative tactic whereby this, thelast of the woes of Cadmus, recapitulates and amplifies earlier disasters. The rehearsalof exempla is itself based on the example of the Virgilian Juno (Aeneid 1.39-45,7.304-7).

42 I do not know what to make of the fact that Juno s redoubled nger s paralleled y thatof the serpent at Met. 3.72-3 postquam olitas accessit ad iras causa recens .

43 There are verbal echoes of Juno s speech at Aen. 1.37-49 n Juno s monologues at Met.3.262-72 and 4.422-31. See Otis, pp. 131f., 137ff.D6pp, op. cit. (n. 1above), p. 121observes hatJuno is not prominent n Ovid s version of the story of Aeneas n books 13-14, and that herVirgilian ole is displaced nto the Ino episode.

44 275 anum: Aen. 7.419 anus. 276 rugis: Aen. 7.417.45 J. Perret, Virgile Paris, 1965), pp. 113f.



11/13

OVID S THEBAN HISTORY 233

Juno s attack on Ino opens with pronounced verbal echoes of Virgil (Met.4.422-3):

nec tulit et secum potuit de paelice natusvertere Maeonios pelagoque mmergere autas...

From book one of the Aeneid Ovid repeats the elliptical secum that opens Juno smonologue (Aen. 1.37), and alludes to Juno s example of Pallas who was able todrown in the sea the returning Greeks (40 potuit summergere ponto ). But thesuccessful immersion of Ino comes about only as the end-result of a lengthyreworking of the intervention of Juno and Allecto in book seven of the Aeneid. Juno sonslaught against Ino comes suddenly at a point when the relationship betweenThebes and the gods seems to have been settled with the acceptance city-wide ofBacchus at 4.416-18 (who had been the divine antagonist since 3.528); just as Juno sintervention at Aeneid 7.286ff. comes after what had seemed to be the end of Aeneastroubles, with the establishing of peace between Italians and Trojans. In Aeneid 1Juno uses the elements of the natural world against Aeneas; in book 7 she turns to

an agent of domestic disruption (7.335-7). In the case of Inofuror is unleashed withinthe domus itself, whereas in the case of Semele the too prosperous domus had beendestroyed from outside by the Jupiter who wields the force of the storm. Ovid varieshis Virgilian model by substituting Tisiphone for her sister Allecto, but also therebyreminds us that it was Tisiphone that we had met with Aeneas during his katabasisin Aeneid 6.46 In Aeneid 6, and also on the Shield of Aeneas in 8, Virgil shows us anUnderworld whose rewards and punishments sanction the correct , Roman, order ofthings; book 7, sandwiched in between, demonstrates other uses to which the powersof Hell may be put. Ovid s combination of allusions to adjacent books of the Aeneidmay suggest reflection on the juxtaposition. Later, the Statian Thebes will find thatthe Underworld is the source of nothing but destruction.47

But the manner of Juno s approach to Tisiphone owes less to the abrupt evocationof Allecto in Aeneid 7 and more to the Juno and Aeolus scene in Aeneid 1, in thedetailed description of the dwelling-place of the power called upon and in thecommands, promises and prayers (472) with which Juno inundates the Fury.

Tisiphone s response (476-8) is as compliant as Aeolus (Aen. 1.76-80).48 Tisiphone seruption from the Underworld, taking with her some of the personifications that arestabled at the threshold of the Virgilian Underworld, reads largely as a pastiche of theeffects of Allecto on Amata, but with the emphasis directed away from Virgilianpsychology to the picturesque externals of a literary Fury with her witch s brew(500ff.). Juno uses the power of Bacchus against his own family (512ff.), as she haddiverted against Semele the thunderbolt of her lover in her earlier intervention; Ovidthus offers a neat motivation for the combination of inFuriation and Maenadism thatin Virgil seemed rather arbitrarily thrown together.49

46 There are further choes of Aen. 6 at 4.436 (Aen. 6.462), 439 (cf. 127), 446 (642), 453 (555),484ff. (273ff.).

47 Ovid, apparently without ubstantial recedent B6mer, p. 146), elaborates picture of thecity of Dis, Met. 4.437-46; indeed it is one of the most detailed cityscapes in the poem. Is therea point about the real urbs aeterna in the context of a story of failed ktisis?

48 carceris of the Underworld at 453 may echo the carcer of the winds at Aen. 1.54; cf. Met.4.663. Is there point in the use of Athamas patronymic in postes Aeolii at 486f. ? In Virgil thewinds break out of the gates of (another) Aeolus.

4 Aen. 7.385ff.; note esp. 389 euhoe Bacche = Met. 4.523. Maenad and Erinys are oftenvirtually interchangeable in the language of Attic tragedy: J.-P. Guipin, The Tragic Paradox(Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 21-2; W. Whallon, Maenadism in the Oresteia , HSCPh 68 (1964),321-2.



12/13

234 PHILIP HARDIE

Ino's Maenadic frenzy, no more the result of actual Dionysiac possession thanAmata's (Aeneid 7.385), drives her to fling herself and her son into the sea. At 531there is a surprise: the episode had begun with a stepmother's hostility worked outon her stepson's aunt, and it now concludes with a grandmother's pity as Venus

intercedes for her granddaughter with her uncle Neptune.50 The words at Venus alsointroduce Venus' plea at Aeneid 5.779ff. to Neptune to grant her Trojans a safevoyage to Italy.5 Neptune's reassurance there that she could trust in the brinykingdom whence she had her birth (5.800f.) is remembered by the Ovidian Venusetymologizing on her Greek name (Met. 4.536ff.); or perhaps Ovid hints at aBloomian reversal of influence when in the sea-thiasos of Neptune at Aen. 5.823 thereappears the propitious form of Inousque Palaemon.52

In Aeneid 5 Venus' immediate cause for complaint is Juno's attempt to bring aboutthe firing of the ships (an episode already exploited by Ovid in Juno's attack onSemele); but that sequence of attempted destruction of ships followed by thefavourable intervention of Neptune repeats, as he himself reminds Venus at 5.801f.,

the programmatic calming of the storm in Aeneid one. There Venus appears on thescene only after the tempest is assuaged, to complain to her father Jupiter; but in oneway Ovid's Venus and Neptune scene is closer to Neptune's calming of the waves inAeneid 1 than it is to the Venus and Neptune scene in Aeneid 5: in Ovid help isrequested not prospectively for the coming journey, but immediately for a favouritealready at the mercy of the waves, as Neptune in Aeneid 1 intervenes to save a victimof Juno in articulo mortis.53 Thus Ovid's remodelling of the Juno and Allecto episodein Aeneid 7 is framed by allusions to the corresponding storm scene in Aeneid 1.

How does the score stand between the gods at the end of the Theban story? Venusis successful in her intercession on behalf of her granddaughter and great-grandson,as she had been on behalf of Aeneas in Virgil. In both cases her proteges are rewardedwith apotheosis, of a watery kind.54 But this is no consolation for her son-in-lawCadmus, who is ignorant that his daughter and grandson have become gods of the sea

(4.563-4).55 This ignorance, with the consequent departure of the founder from hiscity and his eventual bestialization, means that at the end of Ovid's 'anti-Aeneid'Juno has at least partly succeeded in her vendetta against a hated race, as she doesnot against the Trojans. In the Roman myth apotheosis of the leader is associatedwith the foundation or refoundation of the city (Aeneas, Romulus, Julius Caesar,Augustus); Ovid does not suggest that the new gods Leucothoe and Palaemon willhave any special care for the city that they left as mortals. In the Aeneid Juno finallyabandons her vendetta against Aeneas, her wrath converted to joy after reconciliationwith Jupiter (12.841f.): 'adnuit his luno et mentem laetata retorsit; / interea exceditcaelo nubemque relinquit.' In Metamorphoses 4 Juno moves in the other direction

after her katabasis, to resume her place as queen of the sky (4.479f.): 'laeta redit Iuno;5o This version s previously unattested: ee B6mer on Met. 4.531.51 'at Venus' also occurs at line beginning t Aen. 1.411, 691; 8.370, 608. In each case, with

the exception of 1.691, t marks a fresh ntervention y the goddess on behalf of her son.52 Ino-Leucothoe rescues Odysseus from the storm on which the storm in Aen. I is based (Od.

5.333ff.); with Od. 5.336 AE~'qorEv f. Met. 3.531 miserata.iactari, Met. 4.535, is almost a vox propria for the trials of Aeneas: Aen. 1.3, 29, 332, 668,

3.197, 4.14, 6.693, 10.48.54 With Met. 4.539-40 'adnuit oranti Neptunus t abstulit llis quod mortale fuit' compare

14.603 (the apotheosis of Aeneas by Venus in the waters of the Numicus) 'quidquid in Aeneafuerat mortale repurgat'.

5 564 'aequoris esse deos': cf. Aen. 9.102 'aequoris esse deas', the ships of Aeneas saved fromTurnus' attempt to fire them, indirectly another assault on the Trojans by Juno (Aen. 9.2-3).Unlike Cadmus, Aeneas comes to know all about these sea-deities at Aen. 10.215ff.



13/13

OVID S THEBAN HISTORY 235

quam caelum intrare parantem / roratis lustravit aquis Thaumantias Iris. Of Jupiterthere is no trace; and yet one might expect that the god who started it all off whenhe led Cadmus on a merry dance round the world to end up in Boeotia would feelsome responsibility for the well-being of Thebes. Powerless to reverse his wife s

victimization of Semele (Met. 3.295ff.) and of Teiresias (3.336-7), he has noimmovable Capitol in Thebes.56

Magdalene College, Cambridge PHI LIP HARDIE

56 For advice and encouragement am grateful o Richard Buxton, John Henderson, ndJamie Masters.

Documents

Ovid's Theban History